The 9 Basics Of American Commerce That Everyone Should Know

When you live in the most powerful country in the world, the
stakes for not knowing every bit about it become low.

The reason is simple. If you're a country like France or Italy
desperately trying to attract business and investment, you have
to be able to know what your country is best at to make your
pitch at a moment's notice.

The U.S. faces no such pressure.

But on the off chance you've taken this privilege and run with
it, we've put together nine basic facts
about the American economy that you may not know, but really
probably should.

4) America also gets the greatest percentage of its crude
oil from Canada.

5) Our most expensive import is crude, far and away.

We spent close to $300 billion on barrels of crude. The runner-up
includes household gadgets and other industrial machinery.
Returned and reimported items (No. 7) are goods
that might
be defective, or ones on which the importer defaulted or
cancelled.

The above chart doesn't mean that much, since we actually have a
net deficit in most of those categories. Here's where we really
excel — where the world relies on us more than we rely on it. All
the definitions are
here »

8) America is a service economy.

Here's our balance of services. We are tops in "other private
services" which is practically anything you can think of:
finance, insurance, telecom, education, etc. We have a
billion-dollar surplus in services against the rest of the
world.BEA